This article
shows you how to set up samba to allow read-only file sharing for your LAN computers as guest (without be prompted for a password).  There are many advantages of sharing files in a LAN. For instance, when you have a multimedia box (playing music, movies….) it is great to be able to access the music on that box from any machines in your LAN.

You need to have samba installed.

$sudo apt-get install samba

Because we are going to make samba security insecure, make sure only your local network can access samba service. To do so, open and edit /etc/samba/smb.conf

$sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

and set interfaces to lo and your local network interface. In my case: eth1.

interfaces = lo eth1
bind interfaces only = true

Change the security variable: security and make sure it is set to share instead of user and that guest account is enabled:

security = share
…
…
guest account = nobody

Create a share to be accessible to guest users:

[Guest Share]
        comment = Guest access share
        path = /path/to/dir/to/share
        browseable = yes
        read only = yes
        guest ok = yes
You can now test that your configuration is good using testparm:

$ testparm

If everything is fine, it is time to reload samba service to have your new configuration taken into account:

$sudo /etc/init.d/samba reload

That’s it, anybody in your LAN can now access your share.

Tags | Linux, Networking, Security, Ubuntu, Windows Vista, Windows XP